Posted 1 year ago on June 18, 2013, 12:32 p.m. EST by Phanya2011
(908)
from Tucson, AZ
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

This has probably been posted here before, but it is such a great idea that can change the face of the 2016 Congress to actually work for the people -- the first half of the video is about NSA and also interesting, but the second half is something that has been done on a small scale.

The voting with dollars plan would establish a system of modified public financing coupled with an anonymous campaign contribution process. It has two parts: patriot dollars and the secret donation booth. It was originally described in detail by Yale Law School professors Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres in their 2002 book Voting with Dollars: A new paradigm for campaign finance.[10] All voters would be given a $50 publicly funded voucher (Patriot dollars) to donate to federal political campaigns. All donations including both the $50 voucher and additional private contributions, must be made anonymously through the FEC. Ackerman and Ayres include model legislation in their book in addition to detailed discussion as to how such a system could be achieved and its legal basis.

Of the Patriot dollars (e.g. $50 per voter) given to voters to allocate, they propose $25 going to presidential campaigns, $15 to Senate campaigns, and $10 to House campaigns. Within those restrictions the voucher can be split among any number of candidates for any federal race and between the primary and general elections. At the end of the current election cycle any unspent portions of this voucher would expire and could not be rolled over to subsequent elections for that voter. In the context of the 2004 election cycle $50 multiplied by the approximately 120 million people who voted would have yielded about $6 billion in “public financing” compared to the approximate $4 billion spent in 2004 for all federal elections (House, Senate and Presidential races) combined.[11] Ackerman and Ayres argue that this system would pool voter money and force candidates to address issues of importance to a broad spectrum of voters. Additionally they argue this public finance scheme would address taxpayers' concerns that they have "no say" in where public financing monies are spent, whereas in the Voting with dollars system each taxpayer who votes has discretion over their contribution.

Lessig (2011, p. 269) notes that the cost of this is tiny relative to the cost of corporate welfare, estimated at $100 billion in the 2012 US federal budget. However, this considers only direct subsidies identified by the Cato Institute. It ignores tax loopholes and regulatory and trade decisions, encouraging business mergers and other activities that can stifling competition, creativity and economic growth; the direct subsidies can be a tiny fraction of these indirect costs.

The second aspect of the system increases some private donation limits, but all contributions must be made anonymously through the FEC. In this system, when a contributor makes a donation to a campaign, they send their money to the FEC, indicating to which campaign they want it to go. The FEC masks the money and distributes it directly to the campaigns in randomized chunks over a number of days. Ackerman and Ayres compare this system to the reforms adopted in the late 19th century aimed to prevent vote buying, which led to our current secret ballot process. Prior to that time voting was conducted openly, allowing campaigns to confirm that voters cast ballots for the candidates they had been paid to support. Ackerman and Ayres contend that if candidates do not know for sure who is contributing to their campaigns they are unlikely to take unpopular stances to court large donors which could jeopardize donations flowing from voter vouchers. Conversely, large potential donors will not be able to gain political access or favorable legislation in return for their contributions since they cannot prove to candidates the supposed extent of their financial support.